Assassin's Apprentice (The Farseer Trilogy, #1)

by Robin Hobb

“Sometimes,” grumbled Chade, “it is better to be defiantly wrong than silent.

There speaks the Queen’s ghost with the King’s tongue.”

felt the tension as a pleasant thing between us, as a suspension and a wonder both. I viewed it as an extension of my strange new sense, and so I marveled that Molly seemed to feel and react to it as well. I wanted to speak to her about it, to ask her if she was aware of other folk in a similar way. But I feared that if I asked her, I might reveal myself as I had to Chade, or that she might be disgusted by it as I knew Burrich would be. So I smiled, and we talked, and I kept my thoughts to myself.

“When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool, you end up sounding like a moron instead.

He is my younger half brother, boy, though he was conceived in a wedded bed and I on a military campaign near Sandsedge.”

So quickly were we all made accomplices in our own degradation.

You’d better decide where you will draw the line. And soon. Very soon. The danger is greater than you know.”

The skill, at its simplest, is the bridging of thought from person to person. It can be used a number of ways. During battle, for instance, a commander can relay simple information and commands directly to those officers under him, if those officers have been trained to receive it. One powerfully Skilled can use his talent to influence even untrained minds or the minds of his enemies, inspiring them with fear or confusion or doubt. Men so talented are rare. But, if incredibly gifted with the Skill, a man can aspire to speak directly to the Elderlings, those who are below only the gods themselves. Few have ever dared to do so, and of those who did, even fewer attained what they asked. For it is said, one may ask of the Elderlings, but what they answer may not be the question you ask, but the one you should have asked. And the answer to that question may be one a man cannot hear and live. For when one speaks to the Elderlings, then is the sweetness of using the Skill strongest and most perilous. And this is the thing that every practitioner of the Skill, weak or strong, must always guard against. For in using the Skill, the user feels a keenness of life, an uplifting of being, that can distract a man from taking his next breath. Compelling is this feeling, even in the common uses of the Skill, and addictive to any not hardened of purpose. But the intensity of this exultation when speaking to the Elderlings is a thing for which we have no comparison. Both senses and sense may...

Somewhere I could hear a whimpering, and I despised myself for that, too. But as I scraped myself along, it grew, as a spark in the distance becomes a fire as one approaches. It refused to be ignored. It grew louder in my mind, a whining against my fate, a tiny voice of resistance that forbade that I should die, that denied my failure. It was warmth and light, too, and it grew stronger and stronger as I tried to find its source. I stopped. I lay still. It was inside me. The more I sought it, the stronger it grew. It loved me. Loved me even if I couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t love myself. Loved me even if I hated it. It set its tiny teeth in my soul and braced and held so that I couldn’t crawl any farther. And when I tried, a howl of despair burst from it, searing me, forbidding me to break so sacred a trust. It was Smithy.

But its ancient meaning, I think, I can divulge here. Catalyst. The Changer.

And a catalyst i became!

I was very comfortable until someone opened a stable door and left it ajar. A nasty little wind came creeping across the stable floor to chill me, and I looked up with a growl. I smelled Burrich and ale. Burrich came slowly through the dark, with a muttered, “It’s all right, Smithy,” as he passed me. I put my head down as he began to climb his stairs. Suddenly there was a shout and men falling down the stairs. They struggled as they fell. I leaped to my feet, snarling and barking. They landed half atop me. A boot kicked at me, and I seized the leg above it in my teeth and clamped my jaws. I caught more boot and pant than flesh, but he hissed in anger and pain, and struck at me. A knife went into my side. I set my teeth harder and held on, snarling around my mouthful. Other dogs had awakened and were barking, the horses were stamping in their stalls. Boy, boy, I called for help. I felt him with me, but he didn’t come. The intruder kicked me, but I wouldn’t let go. Burrich lay in the straw and I smelled his blood. He did not move. I snarled around the mouthful. I heard old Vixen flinging herself against the door upstairs, trying vainly to get to her master. Again and then again the knife plunged into me. I cried out to my boy a last time, and then I could no longer hold on. I was flung off the kicking leg, to strike the side of a stall. I was drowning, blood in my mouth and nostrils. Running feet. Pain in the dark. I hitched closer to Burrich. I pushed my nose under his hand...

I felt the tiny warmth that was Smithy ebbing in my grasp. “Smithy!” I whispered, a desperate plea that he somehow stay with me. I all but saw a tail tip stir in a last effort at a wag. Then the thread snapped and the spark blinked out. I was alone.

It seemed to me that I had lost everything when I lost Smithy. Or perhaps in my bitterness I set out to destroy what little was left to me.

I arrived just in time to see Molly leaving on Jade’s arm.

“How they must laugh in their beards, if they knew we slay our own.”

they are trained, as monkeys and parrots are taught to mimic men, with no understanding of what they do. But they are what I have.”

if you Skilled into him at all, I’m sure you’ve seen what Chivalry did to him. He hated your father with a passion, prior to Chiv turning him into a lapdog.

“FitzChivalry Farseer.” I halted, frozen by the words. I turned slowly. “It’s your name, boy. I wrote it myself, in the military log, on the day you were brought to me. Another thing I had thought you knew.

The appetite for the Skill is one that devours a man, not one that nourishes him.”

I’d rather unman a man with a blade than turn the hounds of his own mind to nipping at his heels.”

nodded, surprised at what I felt emanating from him. A shadow of the same pain I had felt at being separated from my own dogs.

“When Verity goes to claim his bride, you will go with him,” he said again. “You understand what your duties will be? I trust to your discretion.” I inclined my head to him. “As you wish, my king.”

“His name is FitzChivalry.” August frowned suddenly and amended her introduction. “Fitz. The Bastard.”

“Of course, how could I have been so stupid? You are the one they call Fitz. Do not you usually travel with Lady Thyme, King Shrewd’s poisoner? And are you not training as her apprentice? Regal has spoken of you.”

It was occurring to me, belatedly, that Prince Rurisk had shown none of the signs of injury or illness that Regal had reported. I needed to withdraw from the situation and reevaluate it. There was more, much more, going on than I had been prepared for.

And as I made my way back to my room, I wondered what else they would try when they found the poison hadn’t worked.

later wondered if that might not be the secret of the harmonious household, that all servants or royalty, be treated with the same courtesy.

At his master’s voice, the old hound heaved himself to his feet and came to lean affectionately on Rurisk. He looked up at me, and it was Nosy. I stared at him, and his copper-ore eyes returned the look. I quested softly toward him, and for a moment received only puzzlement. And then a flood of warmth, of affection shared and remembered. There was no doubt that he was Rurisk’s hound now; the intensity of the bond that had been between us was gone. But he offered me back great fondness and warm memories of when we were puppies together.

just saw Nosy. He’s fine. Older now, but he’s had a happy life. All these years, Burrich, I always believed you killed him that night. Dashed out his brains, cut his throat, strangled him—I imagined it a dozen different ways, a thousand times. All those years.” He looked at me incredulously. “You believed I would kill a dog for something you did?” “I only knew he was gone. I could imagine nothing else. I thought it was my punishment.”

There can be no misunderstandings if there are no understandings at all.

Don’t do what you can’t undo, until you’ve considered what you can’t do once you’ve done it.

I could tell Regal I was going to kill Rurisk, and then kill Regal instead. The smoke, I told myself. Only the smoke made that sound so wise.

Sevrens rose abruptly and left me. Rowd sat like a toad in the corner, eyeing me and smiling. I would have to kill both of them before we returned to Buckkeep, if I were to preserve my usefulness as an assassin. I wondered if they knew that.

“It’s like this. FitzChivalry realized tonight he is a dead man. Too many people have been told he is an assassin. If he kills me, you kill him. If he doesn’t kill me, how can he go home and face his king? Even if his king forgives him, half the court will know he’s an assassin. That makes him useless. Useless bastards are a liability to royalty.”

Cob this night. He was faster and more muscular than I, clearer of head. His arms closed around me and he bore me down to the floor. His face was close to mine as he drove his fist into my belly. I knew this breath, this scent of sweat. Smithy had scented this, before he died. But this time the knife was in my sleeve and very sharp and treated with the swiftest poison Chade knew. After I put it into him, he managed to hit me twice, good solid punches, before he fell back, dying. Good-bye, Cob.

As if in answer to my question, a cry of purest pain rose to the moon. The ululation seemed to hang there, and to pull my heart out with it as it rose. Nosy’s master was dead. I flung myself toward him, wrapped the Wit around him. I know, I know, and we shivered together as one he had loved passed beyond reach. The great aloneness wrapped us together. Boy? Faint, but true. A paw and a nose, and a door edged open. He padded toward me, his nose telling me how bad I smelled. Smoke and blood and fear sweat. When he reached me, he lay down beside me and put his head on my back. With the touch came the bond again. Stronger now that Rurisk was gone. He left me. It hurts. I know. A long time passed. Free me? The old dog lifted his head. Men cannot grieve as dogs do. We should be grateful for that. But from the depths of his anguish, he still rose, and set worn teeth to my bonds. I felt them loosen, a strand at a time, but had not even the strength to pull them apart. Nosy turned his head to set his back teeth to them.

“Fitz, what are you? What have you become?” “I am what you are,” I told him honestly. “A king’s man. Burrich, they’re going to kill Verity. If they do, Regal will become King.”

The art of diplomacy is the luck of knowing more of your rival’s secrets than he knows of yours.

how could I have overheard Skilling between two others? No,

I do not know who I wish to win; until I do, I will let no player be eliminated.”

The steam and the noise of the waters had cloaked the Chyurda well. He was taller than Burrich, and his cudgel was already in motion as Burrich turned. If he hadn’t been supporting my weight, he could have avoided it. Burrich turned his head, but the cudgel hit his skull with a terrible, sharp sound, like an ax biting wood. Burrich fell, and I with him.

So play for time, Chade’s counsel advised me. The more time you create for yourself, the better the chance that something will present itself.

“Take it all. I would die anyway. And you were always good to me when I was young.”

Not many knew Galen was the Queen’s bastard and his half brother.

The golden-skinned creature has been the victim of moths and fraying, but it is still possible to see that in the scale of the tapestry, it is much larger than a human, and possibly winged. Buckkeep legend has it that King Wisdom sought and found the Elderlings’ homeland by a secret path through the Mountain Kingdom. Could these figures represent an Elderling and King Wisdom? Does this tapestry record the path through the Mountain Kingdom to the Elderlings’ homeland in the Rain Wilds?

All Rurisk’s possessions were given away. To me Eyod himself came, and brought a simple silver ring his son had worn. And the head of the arrow that had pierced his chest. He did not say much to me, except to tell me what the objects were, and that I should cherish these reminders of an exceptional man. He left me to wonder why these items had been selected for me.

But if you decide we are going elsewhere, then we shall.” I think I finally guessed then what the earring signified.

You’re enough to wake the dead, he told me genially. We must find a master for you, to teach you some control, if nothing else.

Go back to sleep, he told me. Galen is dead, and I’ve put Regal on a shorter leash. You’ve nothing to fear. Go to sleep, and stop dreaming so loud.

I tried not to let it affect my loyalties. But in my heart, when I said “my king,” I meant Verity.